Tuesday, 13 May 2014

AFRICA: Post Colonial Africa-Imitating Putin

Like the rest of the world, Africa witnessed from afar Crimea annexation to
Russia and still follows from afar the new developments of Russian Speakers
eastern Ukrainians taking a leap forward to self-rule, possibly, another annexation
to Russia. With Crimea annexation and others eastern Ukrainian regions warming
up to the idea of being under Russia's control, Russian President Vladimir
Putin has implied that Russia is the rightful owner of all territories where Russian
speakers reside.

The Ukrainian citizenship of Russian speakers is dismissed by Russia as
secondary to their ethnic origin. They are Russian first, Ukrainian by
accident, Moscow’s story line states. Russian speakers were/are then said to be
in danger, firstly from discrimination and then physically. This was the
pretext for Russian military movements into Crimea. Ironically this seems to be
the main reason behind last Sunday's independence referendum in others eastern
Ukrainian regions.

While the international community led by the US would not recognise the Ukrainians
pro-Russia Separatists referendum, African’s reactions are muted. No African
nation wishes to put forth an opinion, much less a condemnation. What most
impressed African leaders, who are power pragmatists and judge all territorial
developments, not on the basis of morality, but on results at the end of the
day, is that Putin’s land grab is working.

They have learned that the process of annexing territory calls for a
combination of adroit propaganda and military might. Both are put in the
service of aggression founded on the pretext that a group of people who are of
the aggressor’s own ethnicity are imperilled within a coveted territory. Once
this premise is established, evidence of the people’s danger is manufactured by
a full-scale media assault while, quickly, troops are moved into place. The
military personnel and weaponry’s placement can then ensure a ‘’fait
accompli’’.

There is nothing stopping African despots with territorial ambitions from
studying Putin’s playbook to see if they too may grab land as successfully.
Africa has always been a tremulous patchwork of illogical national boundaries,
simmering ethnic hatreds that sometimes rise to genocide, national resources
coveted by neighbours and authoritarian leaders whose imperialistic desires
could be met if only they could find a way to get away with land grabs.

In contrast of what's happening in eastern Ukraine, history has taught us
that African land grabs process is successfully done by way of domestic
genocide and the vulnerability of neighbours. The danger of regions taken over
by powerful neighbours was on display in Central and East Africa in early 2014,
and exists in lesser and incipient movements elsewhere. These developments are
not new and have been a part of Africa’s post-colonial history.

This excuse has been favoured by authoritarian governments throughout Africa
as their reason ‘’du jour’’ after the collapse of the Soviet Union
retired the long-running excuse for foreign aggression and domestic oppression
in the name of “battling Communism.”

Idi Amin’s military incursion into Tanzania in 1977-78 was a land grab. The
original pretext for the invasion into the Kagera region of Tanzania was to
pursue anti-Amin army forces that had taken refuge there. However, Amin
proceeded to annex Kagera, claiming that the land had always belonged to
Uganda. The Africa continental body of the day, the Organisation for African
Unity (OAU), was a fragmented and militarily powerless entity compared to
today’s African Union (AU). It was up to Tanzania to mount a counter offense,
which led to the collapse of the Amin regime and his exile to Saudi Arabia.

Uganda’s impulse to annex by way of military action and expand its borders
into neighbouring regions continued in 2014. The pretext for Uganda’s attempt
at territorial expansion in South Sudan, its northern neighbour, is ‘security’
against ‘terrorists’.

Uganda’s president since 1991, Yoweri Museveni, had a role in Amin’s
overthrow but evidently learned from Amin lessons on cross-border incursions.
Days after South Sudan’s capital Juba was shaken by factional fighting in
December 2013, Ugandan troops moved northward into the country, ostensibly to
protect Ugandan citizens there. However, the troops remained after the Ugandans
were evacuated, and the occupation further destabilised the young country.
Peace talks stalled as the rebel groups made withdrawal of Ugandan soldiers
conditional to discussion of any treaty.

Rwanda’s genocide was based on a desire for territory. A populous country
where tensions between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes centred on the joint sharing
of a single place, ethnic cleansing was seen as the answer by Rwanda’s Hutu-led
government in 1994. The ethnic cleansing playbook was followed.

First, people of the Tutsi tribe were demonised in the propaganda of
government its co-conspirators. Marginalisation and discrimination of Tutsi
followed, and then their forced removal from homes and businesses. Then the
actual killing began, and an estimated 800,000 Tutsi’s were massacred.

No ethnic considerations were used as an excuse by foreign powers to invade
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). DRC
land was sought by Rwanda and Uganda so mineral resources might be looted.
Rwanda’s aggressiveness turned external following the genocide. Rwanda’s
financing of rebel groups in DRC was done not to destabilise a country on
ethnic grounds as part of an overt annexation, but rather to destabilise the
DRC to achieve an invisible annexation, for economic benefits.

According to a June 2013 UN investigation, anti-government M-23 rebels
received support from both Rwanda and Uganda who, in turn, were able to access
the DRC's mineral wealth through illicit means. More than 20 million of
Congolese lost their lives in 20 years of civil war in eastern DRC by Rwanda
and Uganda invasion.

Carving ethnic enclaves out of sovereign nations has been a form of
territorial acquisition found whenever there is a civil war in Africa. All the
self-declared ‘break away regions’ and ‘autonomous homelands’ are attempts by
niche populations to replace democracy, where a country’s peoples work toward a
common cause while safeguarding the rights of minority groups, with autocratic
enclaves that serve one group while excluding others.

The Séléka militant group overthrew the government of the Central African
Republic (CAR) on 24 March 2013, to create an Islamist state. Séléka’s
atrocities were so widespread prior to their ouster from the capital Bangui in
February 2014 that a subsequent anti-Muslim backlash created its own
atrocities. African and European peacekeepers were positioned with a mandate to
ensure the country is not ethnically torn asunder.

In Nigeria, the jihadist group Boko Haram seeks to overthrow government and
create an Islamist state, where citizenship would be based on ethnicity and
religion. The jihadist group occupies a part of Nigeria land where it is
keeping the 100 girls it kidnapped.

Zimbabwe’s autocratic president Robert Mugabe’s ethnic cleansing of his
country of white farmers and businessmen occurred 30 years later, when a less
jaundiced international community responded by imposing sanctions because of
the property seizures and other political and human rights violations.

Mugabe’s political cronies now occupy, but do not make productive use of
confiscated properties. State propaganda demonised white Zimbabwean’s, whose
lack of popularity amongst Zimbabwean’s of other races made their victimisation
a populist triumph for government, the way Hitler’s seizure of Jewish property
was achieved by exploiting German’s emotions and prejudices.

Hitler committed genocide, and while the murders of white farm owners in
Zimbabwe and post-apartheid Africa were a trend in the 1990s and 2000s, with
state-sponsored thugs implicated in Zimbabwe, fears of genocide did not become
reality. However, seizure of territory (massive amounts of farmland and
businesses) by playing the race card did succeed, and racist demagoguery is
still as common in Africa as homophobia.

South Africa’s former African National Congress (ANC) Youth Leader Julius
Malema exemplifies this in his habitual advocacy of shooting “Boers” which he
sings at rallies of his supporters. Political demagoguery founded on ethnic or
racial hatred is a form of aggression. In South Africa hate speech is actively
prosecuted. Enlightened Africans recognise that such demagoguery is the first
step toward conflict, land grabs and genocide.

The conclusion drawn from Russia’s take-over of Crimea and now pushing to
establish Russia’s control over eastern Ukraine regions, through Ukrainians
pro-Russia Separatists, by Africa’s aggressors, from warlords to national
dictators, is that ‘might makes right.’ Aided by a state-run propaganda
apparatus and enforced by superior military force, an aggressive act done in
the name of nationalism or ethnic pride is a certain short-term domestic
success.

A disapproving international community may be again powerless to stop (or as
often in the case of Africa, uninterested in stopping) the aggression, while at
home the popularity of the country’s leadership will soar. As for long-term
complications, such as harm to a national economy from sanctions, African
leaders feel that Russia’s situation is much like their own. Like the proud
Russians, Africans have long-held grievances and decades of poverty inoculating
them against any inconveniences or economic setbacks that sanctions might
bring.

When Russia annexed Crimea, the country resounded with nationalistic pride;
the type of consequences-be-damned pro-war hysteria that commonly enthuses
people at the start of conflicts. The country may suffer in the long term
because of Western counter-measures, but Putin’s policies are intended to be
generational, methodically expanding the Russian Orthodox Empire in a push that
absorbs temporary setbacks, such as market declines and currency devaluations,
to achieve a Russian-speaking hegemony over Eurasia that, unlike Hitler’s
Reich, would be intended to last a much longer than 1,000 years.

African leaders also follow similar generation timelines, and like their
conservative, tribally and ethnically-centred peoples are motivated by
centuries-old memories. Museveni’s championing human rights abuses in Uganda
was a calculated political move, and considerations of consequences beyond
immediately-achieved objectives were of no interest to him.

Museveni and Putin
were voicing identical sentiments at the very same time when they condemned the
‘decadent West’ and claimed for themselves ultimate moral authority – a
morality that allows for the persecution of all people considered ‘others’ by
the politicians’ political base.

Russia’s successful annexation of a portion of a neighbouring country has
raised the likelihood of similar land grabs in Africa. As soon as an
opportunity arises, land grabs will be made by African leaderships remembering
Putin in Crimea, not Saddam Hussein in Kuwait.